Hello Tom. I haven’t seen you for days. Where were you?
I’ve decided it’s time for me to learn more about humans, so I’ve started exploring the city. It’s a big place, and everywhere I go I see humans doing different things. They are so complicated! I don’t think that rational animals like us will ever understand how humans get themselves into so much trouble.
I found a place called “convention center” in the next neighborhood. There were plenty of trees and bushes around, so I hung out all day and watched. They were having a meeting about biofuels.
Buy-a what?
That’s bio-fuels Fraidy. Biofuels means that they grow plants to burn in their cars. They call this “renewable energy”
I hate cars! They make the air around them so nasty it can make you choke.
Well, that bad air is so bad that it’s making all the weather change everywhere. Nothing will come in its right time once the order of the seasons has changed. It will be really bad, but most humans pretend it isn’t happening
The scariest thing about humans is that instead of looking at evidence most of them will just believe what they want. They get mad if anyone tries to tell them that trouble is coming.
But that’s crazy!
Of course it is. Animals are smarter than that. No animal would ever want to be fooled. When other cats challenged me I was always smarter. I knew the territory. I was alert to every sound. Humans are not that smart — most humans, if they have to chose between facts and their personal beliefs, will deny the facts.
So the Republicans kept telling humans that they should not believe the facts about climate change. They became “deniers” because they deny what is obvious.
Were some Republicans at that meeting, telling humans to deny the facts?
No Fraidy, that’s the reason I’m so upset about what I saw there, because there were no Republicans at all. It’s impossible to talk to anyone who has already made up his mind, and that includes the Greens.
Aren’t they the ones who want to be good to all the plants and animals?
Yes they are, but they thought biofuels was some kind of good idea, and now that the facts show they were wrong they try to explain away the facts.
There was a human outside the door handing out leaflets against what they were doing at the meeting. I listened to him for hours talking to the other humans, trying to explain that growing plants to burn in your car means that rain forests are being cut down. But most of them did not want to admit they were wrong. The human with the pamphlets said it was just like talking to a climate-change denier.
Is it bad to cut down rain forests?
Oh yes, little one. It is a terrible, horrible thing. In a rain forest there are many many kinds of animals, and many many kinds of plants. You have monkeys and other animals that spend their lives in the trees. You have a beautiful cat known as the jaguar, and…
Oh no! Those poor cats!
Yes, Fraidy, remember when I told you about bobcat, who had to move into the city because his territory was taken over by humans? Well, you could never count high enough to know how many creatures are being killed or becoming homeless from human greed. Humans want to get rich by growing plants so that other humans can burn them in their cars.
But humans are going to kill themselves if they destroy the rain forest, because that is the main place where good air comes from — what they call oxygen. Humans don’t care if they kill themselves and their young. All they can think about is their greed.
Are the Green humans greedy?
Not in the same way the Republicans are. But they’re human, and don’t want to think that they might be wrong. They deny the evidence in many complicated ways, so they won’t have to think about the results from something they thought was good.
It’s the same old story Fraidy. If people who want to be good refuse to stop doing something bad, how can we ever hope that the people who get rich from doing bad things would ever change?
I keep thinking about all those cats losing their homes. I ‘m getting back under the bed!
Goodnight Fraidy Kat.
